54th Anniversary of Hurricane Camille -- BRAKE VALVES

[NW Mailing List]

"Mr. Lisle will probably want to clean up my memories, but that is fine, 
too."

   Yes, I do have something to say about Mr. Burdett's assumptions.
     From my experience and knowing little about Southern locos at the 
time, I would think that the Southern unit was more likely to have been 
equipped with the No.6 brake valve. The 24RL brake valve was quite 
common, had been is service for a long time, was easy to use and any N&W 
engineer would know how to operate it. On the other hand, the No. 6 
brake valve was a "has been" and not very common on units used on the 
mainline. The only time that I ever even had any actual dealings with 
one was at the training facility in Atlanta where we went over its 
operation in class and the only ones that I remember seeing in a consist 
were on former NKP or WAB units and were trailing in the consist. The 
No.6 was not as easy to use or set up. It also did not have a pressure 
maintaining feature like the 24 or 26 brake. As a side note, the No. 8 
brake valve did not have a pressure maintaining feature either, but, 
engineer C.I. Robbins related to me that there was a way to get it to 
maintain leakage, you just had to know where to place the brake handle 
after an application.
     Being that the No.6 brake was not common, it wouldn't be as 
familiar to the engineers as the 24 or 26. Let me relate as best I can 
one story about the No.6 brake. Ronnie Bell was called out of 
Winston-Salem on a northbound train. On this particular trip, his lead 
unit was equipped with a No.6 brake and was not equipped with dynamic 
brake. The Superintendent, Bill Bridger, just happened to be riding back 
to Roanoke on the head end that night. Ronnie asked to swap units around 
in order to get a unit with a better brake valve and dynamic brakes on 
the head end. Bridger refused to let him do it!
     As luck would have it, going downgrade from Fulp the air brake for 
whatever reason failed and since there was no DB, the train roared 
through Walnut Cove at a very high rate of speed before Ronnie was able 
to get the train stopped short of Belews Creek Jct. And I think by the 
time it did Mr. Bridger was as the song says..."A whiter shade of pale"! 
He then told Ronnie, "Let's go up to Belews Creek and swap these engines 
around"!
     But back to the main subject of this story. I highly doubt that 
"IF" the Southern unit was equipped with a 24RL brake that he would not 
know how to set it up. Yes, the 24RL brake was on the way out, just like 
the No.6 & 8, but, there were still plenty of them around for many years 
to come, so it was a brake valve that was very common to all. Who knows 
what exactly went wrong? Maybe something failed to get set up right?

Jimmy Lisle

On 8/23/2023 8:38 AM, NW Mailing List wrote:
> Saith Comrade Hamiltonius :
>
>>>>>>>>> We had gone only a couple of miles when the engineer called out, "we don't have any brakes." There was a moment of silence from all of us before he said "we are starting down the mountain, and we don't have any brakes." At that the Southern RFE reached over the engineer's shoulder and moved the automatic brake valve into the emergency position, stopping the train. After determining that the brake valve was indeed inoperative in the service application zone, the Southern RFE said to the N&W engineer, "Let me run it. I am more experienced in this than you are." <<<<<<<<
> It appears the Southern Engine was equipped with a No. 24 brake valve and the N&W man was only experienced on the newer No. 26 brake equipment. Quite understandable. They work differently.
>
> With the old 24 equipment, the brake handle had to be moved right to the far end of the application quadrant to align the ports to reduce Equalizing Reservoir pressure (and Brake Pipe pressure follows Equalizing Reservoir pressure.) After the desired amount of reduction was shown on the gauge, the brake valve handle was them moved back left to the Lap position, and that stopped the reduction and held Brake Pipe pressure where you had set it (... until leakage caught up with you and applied even more braking effort.)
>
> With the new 26 equipment, any movement of the brake valve handle in the application portion of the quadrant produces a decrease in E.R. pressure, and therefore in Brake Pipe pressure. Tap the handle over just an eighth of an inch, and you will hear another small reduction. And you just leave the handle there until ready to release. That is, the valve does not have to be lapped.
>
> The older equipment which N&W used was the No. 6 and No. 8 brake valve, which functioned just like the 24. I think the 24 brake was introduced in the late 1940s. The 26 was introduced in the very late 1950s and I remember seeing it on the Class J and K passenger engines, but I do not know if any of the freight engines were equipped with 24. The first N&W Diesels came with 24 equipment.
>
> The 26 was the dummy brake... it took a lot of the planning out of the equation. With the 24 equipment, and the older No. 6 equipment, there was no provision for "fine tuning" the application, and if you didn't plan ahead you would stall out the train. I used to catch an occasional local engine equipped with No. 6 equipment, and you had to stay on your toes. And yes, I stalled out a couple trains with those - you just hoped that happened somewhere on a branch line so no one except the crew knew about it !
>
> The No. 24 brake valve was a perfectly good brake valve. The reason it was replaced by the 26 equipment was that Neoprene had been developed and used to make diaphragms inside the new 26 equipment. The 26 was also equipped with "spool valves" or cams internally. These improvements did away with the old heavy brass blocks inside the 24 equipment, which were ported to align with each other when rotated into certain positions. Since the 26 equipment no longer had those surfaces which required lubrication, the ICC/FRA increased the 24 month clean/lube cycle of the 24 valve to 6 years for the 26 valve, which resulted in a maintenance savings. The 26 valves performed marvelously until the Neoprene diaphragm developed a pin-hole, and if that happened the pressure maintaining feature no longer worked and it was Game-Over if you had a long train.
>
> Mr. Lisle will probably want to clean up my memories, but that is fine, too.
>
> Will attach a photo of am old No. 6 brake valve which lives... well, not far from where I am sitting. (The valve to its left, with the handle sticking straight up, is the very early No. 3 "straight air" brake valve...  This was the first form of the brake valve developed by George Westinghouse and I think these were still in service on a few of the N&W M's right up to the end... not sure. And also attaching a photo of the ported brass rotary segment out of an old 24 valve... which lives not far from to the No.6 valve.
>
> -- abram burnett
> Our De-Platformed Turnips went to Rumble and Odysee
>
> ==========================================
> A time is coming when men will go mad,
> and when they see someone who is not mad,
> they will attack him, saying,
> "You are mad; you are not like us."
> ~ St Antony the Great (+356 A.D.)
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